


All Her Hopes

by idrilswritings (idrilhadhafang)



Series: Reverse Chosen One Verse [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Adopted Children, Child Abandonment, Children, Children of Characters, Chosen Ones, Gen, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Original Fiction, Playing with tropes, Secret Children, Space Opera, Uncle-Niece Relationship, Villainesses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-25
Updated: 2020-04-25
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:29:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23843770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idrilhadhafang/pseuds/idrilswritings
Summary: There’s a chance for renewal, for redemption, in this one child.
Relationships: Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Series: Reverse Chosen One Verse [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1718149
Kudos: 4





	All Her Hopes

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Renewal
> 
> Author’s Notes: Call this part of a verse I’m planning on writing. Here’s hoping I’ll actually finish it.

  
“I’m trusting you with my child because I have no one else,” the Dark Queen said to Daric Hartwood even as she sat across from him at the table. Her baby, Mitra, was asleep — already having fed and clearly exhausted from the journey.   
  
Daric nodded. “It’s the Emperor’s, isn’t it?”  
  
The Queen nodded.   
  
“What I don’t understand is why. Why you became...the Queen." Daric sounded almost ragged in that moment, and for a moment, the Dark Queen wondered if she was doing the right thing. If she had made the right choice, stayed on the right path. “Honestly, Anna, when I heard of what you did...I thought the life had gone out of me. I thought that I was going to be sick.”  
  
The Queen nodded. “I know.”  
  
“Then why?” Daric said. “Mom and Dad — they were absolutely distraught.”  
  
The Queen paused. How could she even begin to explain, she wondered. How could she even begin to help her brother understand, what she and the Dark Emperor had seen out there? They had not been rulers of the galaxy then, leaders and teachers, but instead they had been scared soldiers, out in the desert, fighting a war that they were both old enough for and too young for all at once.   
  
“We saw things,” the Queen said. She shifted the baby in her arms; she wondered if Mitra could understand at all what she was saying, if babies could understand concepts like war, like death, like the horrors that both her parents had seen. “Things that we shouldn’t have. We saw too much.”  
  
 _Too much._ That was the best thing she could do, to describe it to little Mitra, lying in her arms. A baby couldn’t understand a dead body lying in the sand, or why the war was happening in the first place. The Queen could remember, as Anna, lying awake at night and wondering why this was happening, wishing there was some way to bring the dead back to life. Even being told that death was a part of the Cycle was hardly a comfort.   
  
_“Then I’ll break the Cycle! I’ll defy it, the stars themselves! The Beyond can have their own soldiers; it has no right to tear people from their families...”_  
  
The Queen looked down at Mitra. Little Mitra, who looked so peaceful and fragile in the Queen’s arms. Someone small, but also strong. The Queen had a feeling, at least, that she would be. She could imagine Mitra. Would she look like her father? Her mother? Someone else in the family? She didn’t know. Maybe she’d look like her Uncle Daric. Maybe.   
  
The Queen could at least afford one “maybe”, in a tower of certainties.   
  
“The war.” Daric sighed as he spoke. “I’m so sorry, Anna. If I knew — ”  
  
“You didn’t start the war,” the Queen said gently. “Of all the people to blame, I blame you least.” She sighed. “I suppose the war gave me something. It gave me a mission.”  
  
“That’s what you call it?”   
  
The Queen nodded. “Someone’s got to keep the tower from collapsing.”  
  
“Yes, but...what you’re doing...”  
  
“I did this for them,” the Queen said. “To defy the Cycle.”  
  
“Yes, but...it’s not you.”  
  
“I haven’t been me for a long time.”  
  
Silence.   
  
“Daric,” the Queen said, “Whatever you do...look after Mitra. She deserves that much. I can’t raise her in the court myself... _they’ll_ kill her. Or exploit her. They don’t care that she’s a baby. Not as long as they see it as a victory for their side.”  
  
Daric nodded grimly. Then, “I’ll do it for her then.”  
  
“She has all my hopes in there, Daric. In her, I can see a future. A better future than what we have now.”  
  
***  
  
His sister had so much hope, didn’t she? So much belief. Daric couldn’t help but wonder if, in a way, his sister had come out the other side a different person. The same little girl that he’d helped patch up when she hurt herself. The same sister who had wanted to see the galaxy, every star and every planet, the same sister who would go out of her way to nurse baby birds back to health.   
  
Anna had loved people. Completely, wholeheartedly. And now she was destroying it, in the name of loving it. Like whatever had happened out there in that desert had changed her. Daric could only wish, even as she handed him Mitra, that there was some way to save his powerful, wonderful, terrible sister from herself.   
  
“Take care of her,” Anna said. “Give her some semblance of a normal life. She’ll have to take up my mantle at some point, but...keep her safe. Look after her. Love her, as I should have loved her.”  
  
“I will.”  
  
He would do it for Mitra. For Anna. Daric couldn’t say he had any love for the galaxy that had turned his sister into someone that she wasn’t. But he could love these two. Always.


End file.
